At the time, I thought Grant's recommendation of PBH minus 10 or 11cm seemed like a nice simplification of the mainstream performance saddle height method that became a widespread standard in the 80s. Even though Grant's advice on frame height and bar height were/are way out of industry standard and invite people to re-think the way a bike fits, I think his "rule" for saddle height was more a descriptive observation of what most avid cyclists were using.
According to that 70s standard my own ~87cm PBH multiplied by .889 is 77cm and that's the saddle height I rode for 30 years. The standard advice for saddle height in the 80s in the US was based on Greg Lemond's book and Bernard Hinault's book before that. It was assumed back then top racers would have the best advice on saddle height. Hinault's book recommended measuring PBH the way we do now and then multiplying by .889 (IIRC/exactly) to get bb center to saddle top distance, assuming a 170 crank. Lemond's book used a different multiplier for a pedal spindle center to saddle top height which was a way of taking into account crank length and foot length better. Hinault's and Lemond's numbers tended to result in the same saddle height for most riders. Grant's subtraction method matches closely this multiplier method in the mid-size bike sizes but would result in proportionately lower saddle heights for smaller riders and proportionally higher saddle heights for taller riders. *That's one reason I assumed his "rule" was more descriptive. I think it was not so much a method of arriving at saddle height but more a way to estimate frame size--a way to prevent getting too small a frame.* The 80s .889 saddle height method represented a significant rise in standard saddle height from the previous generations of racers/riders (continent, Britain, N.America) mid-70s and earlier, who used lower saddles at least 2cm lower. You seen this in older photos of racers and riders with much more knee bend at bottom than this new standard allowed. This would have been or become the dominant saddle height theory during the period Grant P was racing and was pretty standard for N.Americans by mid-80s even before Lemond's book came out. Eddy B. (Polish emigre) was a top US coach/guru in the mid 80s and recommended even higher seat heights if you could manage them without too much hip rocking. He based this on VOmax studies, which I won't go into, but suffice it to say the Hinault/Lemond method was considered by comparison a fairly conservative method in the 80s. To my surprise, this mainstream N.American method wasn't the accepted wisdom among racers/riders in Britain when I lived and raced there beginning in the late 80s. To my team mates my saddle was a little high. But I persisted because continental riders were using the same method N.Americans were using, including the French, Swiss, and Flemish clubs we partnered with for Velodrome events. Also all the Six Day pros used this same saddle height. I assumed British club racers were just more traditional and would eventually adopt the new method. In the last 10 years though, out of boredom and wanting to tinker, and because various experiences had made me wonder whether all those previous generations knew better than we did in the 80s, I decided to experiment with lowering my saddle to the heights they were using in the 60s. Lowering a few mm at a time over a month, my saddle height has now been 2cm lower for years now. I've found no drawback whatsoever that I can tell and have enjoyed several advantages of a lower saddle height. My 80s/90s London club-mates were right. So I my own rule now is saddle height 12cm less than PBH. --Mitch -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
